On being enough...

Some days are like this:

You wake up late, your arm aching and bent awkwardly because a baby boy is sleeping there with you, tummy to tummy. You rush through a shower, chug a cup of coffee while nursing the baby, and forget to eat breakfast altogether. You bundle your little family into the car and head to church, confident that it will be smooth-sailing because! There are two of you against the two of them, one for each, and you are equipped with colors and books and you're old hat at this business. Things begin to unravel almost immediately. You have to slip out and nurse the baby, but you neglected to clear this with your three-year-old first, and moments later you hear her wailing behind you. By the time everyone has calmed down, the service is nearly over and you and your husband have grown snappish with each other. It's been a long time since your firstborn has behaved this way in church, and you are certain that this is somehow a reflection on you -- forget your earlier optimism. You drive home, remembering the chaos that awaits you there, the remnants of soggy cereal still in the bowls, piles of dirty laundry, a floor badly in need of vacuuming, and an endless array of little projects that didn't seem quite so daunting the day before, but suddenly their completion seems both stupidly important and totally impossible.

You grow a little weepy.

Your husband makes espresso on the stovetop, and the kitchen fills with the smell of coffee and something scorched and foul because of whatever spilled on the burner last night. Later, you steal a moment to wipe it down and somehow slice your thumb wide open. Before you can wrap your bleeding hand, the baby wakes, the three-year-old cries for you, and the dog barks to go outside. Your husband takes the baby and suggests that you take a nap, but you've finally managed to strip the bed and throw the milk-stained sheets in the wash. You opt for the couch, but you can't quite relax enough to fall asleep, and soon enough the baby needs to nurse again anyway and no amount of swaddling and swaying and shushing and changing will satisfy him in anyone else's arms.

You curl up on the couch with your baby boy, feeling suddenly as emotional and hormonal and wrecked as you did five days after he was born. You're so ridiculously in love with him; you trace the soft curve of his cheek, you listen to the sounds of his contented swallowing, you cup his head in your hand. You burp him and bury your nose in the soft hair at the back of his head, in his neck. You kiss his cheeks, you tickle his toes, you kiss the tip of his nose. You realize it's all going too fast; already he feels so solid, so unlike the tiny newborn you birthed four weeks ago. You haven't had nearly enough time to just stare at him, to memorize every sigh, every goofy newborn expression, every single little detail about the baby he is in this moment. He's the baby who gets strapped to your chest as you go about your day with your daughter; he's along for the ride. You'll never have the luxury of lying with him for hours, just the two of you, breathing in his newness, the way you did on those lazy summer afternoons with your girl three-and-a-half years ago. And you feel guilty. You feel guilty for shortchanging him. You feel guilty for disrupting your daughter's life. The rational part of you understands that you shouldn't see it this way, that their relationship will be important, that siblings are a good thing and you never wanted your daughter to be an only child, but the rational part of you is also trying to function after a night of fractured sleep. The rational part of you is lost underneath the spit-up staining the shirt you couldn't be bothered to change.

You look at your tiny, perfect little boy and think of your beautiful, perfect little girl and wonder if they deserve better than this -- someone who isn't so wrecked and crazy and completely undone by ordinary life some days.

But finally, the baby goes to sleep and your husband says, "Go have that bubble bath." So you grab the novel you'd hoped to finish reading before you gave birth and lower yourself into a tub full of water so hot it nearly scalds you. Your husband opens the door, glass of wine in hand, trailed by your three-year-old. He suggests that they give Mama some privacy.

"No, I wanna stay here. I wanna stay with Mommy," you daughter insists. You sigh and close your eyes. Your husband suggests any number of things to her: a puzzle, a story, even a movie, but --

"No. I just wanna stay with Mommy. Please," she says. You open your eyes again and there it is, that trembly little bottom lip, those huge blue eyes -- they break your heart. Nothing about the allure of fifteen minutes alone is powerful enough to compete with your little girl's need at that moment. You sigh and tell your husband, "It's all right." And it is, sort of. Your daughter closes the door firmly after her daddy and returns to the side of the tub, where she dips her fingers in the water, offers her own rubber duckie, and beams. She stays with you for awhile, totally content to hang out next to the bathtub, chattering happily. Every few minutes, she says, "I'm staying with Mommy," as though she needs to make sure it's real, this uninterrupted time, just the two of you. You remember how thrilled she was ten days ago when you took her to Starbucks, just the two of you, just for a half hour, drinking hot chocolate and sharing a cookie. ("It'll be just Mommy and Suzannah," you'd said to her, and she grinned and grinned and echoed, "Yeah. Just Mommy and Zannah.")

And it is okay. It's even good. Suddenly you don't really care about the book you wanted to read, and somehow this moment is enough. It's enough to make you get out of the bathtub and smile and mean it. It's enough to make the chaos seem manageable. It's enough to bring you back, to do it all again tomorrow.